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Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
1 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
Dr. Jim Alvino: My guest today is Dr. Amit Goswami, a fascinating gentleman, an
absolutely brilliant man who has written quite a few books on
Quantum Physics. He is going to be talking his most recent book, which
I've just finished, called Quantum Creativity, and subtitle, Think Quantum,
Be Creative.
Dr. Goswami is a retired professor of physics at the University of Oregon,
was one of the featured authorities in the movie, What the Bleep Do We
Know!?, and now is founder of the Center for Quantum Activism. One of
Dr. Goswami’s purposes is to make us aware -- make the scientific
community aware and the lay community aware -- that what he calls
“materialist science,” in other words, the science of everyday experience
or our Newtonian Universe predicated on the belief that there is an
objective reality “out there” independent of our consciousness – is a
bankrupt if not dangerous paradigm.
Dr. Goswami is seeking to turn that view on its head when he declares:
"No, that's not the case, consciousness is primary.” He is spearheading a
movement to develop a “science of consciousness,” science within
consciousness, a science that recognizes the participatory role of the
observer. In addition to Quantum Creativity, he has written The Self-
Aware Universe, The Visionary Window, Physics of the Soul, God Is Not
Dead. And he is one magnificent, brilliant yet down-to-earth human
being… Dr. Goswami, welcome!
Dr. Amit Goswani: Thank you so much.
Dr. Alvino: It's such an honor, such an honor to have you on the show. I've just
finished your latest book, and I know your other books, saw you on What
the Bleep Do We Know!?, and you have a perspective and a position that
has resonated with me for decades, although just as yours, perhaps, has
been recently articulated and crystallized, so has mine….
Let's jump right into your new book, Quantum Creativity, Think Quantum,
Be Creative. What's the central message of this book?
Dr. Goswami: The central message is the subtitle, “think quantum, be creative.”
Quantum thinking is very different from ordinary thinking. It is thinking
at two levels of reality in which quantum objects are allowed to be and
we participate. One level, we are very familiar, the level of which we
have conscious awareness. The other level, psychologists call it
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
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“unconscious.” Scientific materialists deny it, spiritual traditions call it
the “transcendent” level, but quantum physics discovered the scientific
meaning of this level. It is the level of potentiality where quantum
objects as waves of potentiality reside. This is the level that we can
access and this is where our creative causal power lies
Quantum thinking involves not only thinking deliberately in a step-by-
step way, like we do in conscious awareness, but also allowing the
unconscious to do our job partly. When we do that, the combination of
the subconscious and conscious processing is dynamite. The combination
is causally potent, [the] combination is creative. What we call “creative”
is what we experience as creativity.
We can make fun of creativity by thinking of [it as merely a] brain
phenomenon, but that's not really creativity, it's just rehash. Real
creativity depends on the school-level thinking ability. Anyone can
develop it, anyone can build on it. All you have to do is to understand
some basic stuff, follow a process… so think quantum, be creative. 
Dr. Alvino: That's amazing. You make it sound so easy, and actually, maybe it is. You
stated [the principle] somewhere… you said it's very clear, very clear, that
the space or the place from which we create our reality is an
extraordinary state of consciousness. It's not from the ego, which locks
us into a certain personality, a certain paradigm, blinders, if you will.
What is that extraordinary state of consciousness and how do we actually
access it?
Dr. Goswami: Once again, this is the crucial point, so we can go over it several times
from different angles.
This domain of potentiality is where quantum possibility waves reside.
When we examine it, it's also the domain which is interconnected, where
everything travels instantly and no signal is needed for communication.
In quantum physics, we also call it the “non-local” domain of [reality].
Then when we examine it, we find that this consciousness itself is the
interconnecting element of our existence, and we call consciousness, [it is
that] with which we know. It is really our consciousness, and how do we
prepare for it, how do we access it? This is the crucial question.
We access it quite regularly because we have the ability that is called
intuition. It's one of our four experiences. People get stuck with just
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sensory experience and think that's it. They allow thinking, but only as a
brain phenomenon. In actuality, there is also feeling, which people
experience when they emote, and there is also intuition.
There are four kinds of experiences, and all four experiences are really
possibilities from which consciousness chooses, and then they become
experiences. The actual experience is a result of conscious choice from
possibilities existing in four different kinds of universes.
One is the sensory universe, that one we are familiar with, that’s the
space-time-matter world; but then there is the world of feelings, vital
energy that we feel; then the world of mind, meaning that we think; and
then the world of intuition, which is archetypal. This is the one that you
are interested in because you have this law of attraction.
[Law of attraction] really involves the archetypes. Archetypes are
attracted to us, and this is precisely what we experience in intuition if we
follow up the intuition. An intuition is the signature of the law of
attraction. When we follow this up, then we get into creativity, and
that’s where quantum creativity begins. The process is, as I said, just
learning how to allow the unconscious to process the creative intuition
that begins a creative exploration; allow the unconscious [to unfold].
What does that entail? Ordinary New York, for example, is so busy. It
never allows the unconscious on whatever it is that we are focused on or
that we are investigating. How to allow the unconscious? We’d slow
down. It’s a process of do and be, and that be is just relaxing, doing
nothing. Do and not do, do and be. I often call it do-be-do-be-do because
it truly it involves do-be-do-be-do with alternating doing and be. Doing
because you’ve been focusing (focusing on the question that we are
asking about) and being gives us the ability to process in the unconscious.
Dr. Alvino: What I find amazing is that, actually, in the kind of the world in which we
live – you know, do-do-do -- you have framed it in such a way as elevate
non-doing. Non-doing in a way is equally important, if not more
important, and yet we’re racing around in this digital/electronic world we
participate in each day, and often don’t even take a moment to breathe!
Dr. Goswami: That’s right. We have become the information junkies. Instead of
investigating meaning on the archetypes like love, beauty, justice, truth
we are now information junkies. We just get from one [pile of]
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information to another, and there is just so much information generally
today that we never get enough time for us to even think about meaning
for ourselves, or creativity.
Dr. Alvino: There is a process in your book… you describe a process of going deep, a
process of meditation… it’s a process of “not doing” or non-doing, and I’ll
tell you the truth, it threw me off a little bit. It felt like a direction that I
didn’t anticipate when you turned to archetypes. I haven’t yet connected
the dots for myself as to how and why you went there. What’s this
about?
Dr. Goswami: Because the archetypes are what we investigate in the deepest level of
our being, which I describe as fundamental creativity. Look at scientists,
and how scientists are looking for the archetype of truth. This is a
Platonic archetype. Jungian archetypes are mental representations of
the platonic archetype.
Scientists investigate truth; artists investigate beauty; the lawyer and the
jurist, they investigate justice; ethical people, and religions, they
investigate goodness; business people investigate the archetype of
abundance; psychologists investigate the archetype of the self, so
everyone has an archetype. Every human profession of any importance is
investigating, exploring, an archetype that comes through with
[meditation] to intuition, and we can only make mental representations
of it. Therefore archetypes are beyond thinking.
This is where they [archetypes] are a bit confusing sometimes. Like you
try to define love, and you’ll find that, no you can’t really define it. You
can describe your experiences of it but that’s basically it [is beyond
definition]. Whatever you do is not the definition of love itself.
Dr. Alvino: You just alluded to Platonic forms as essentially the ground or the
foundation of even Jungian archetypes. Wouldn’t something like the
Platonic forms… I see a couple different ways I can ask this, aren’t the
Platonic forms or at least the articulation of those culturally conditioned,
or are there similar or common archetypes regardless of the culture –
whether it’s a western culture, eastern culture and so forth?
Dr. Goswami: I claim that there are… these archetypes are in every culture and every
culture has tried to introduce their take on how civilization [manifests
and unfolds] in that culture according to their images of the archetypes.
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
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Some archetypes have been preferred more selected for investigation in
some of the cultures. Other archetypes the culture ignores. When an
archetype is ignored in a particular culture, you can tell because the
societies will correspondingly be very [strict and closed off]… This is
certainly a problem.
Different religions have different emphasis on different archetypes,
which also does not help so much. This is why we find that some
religions are more open than others. Although, all religions are based on
the fundamental truth that consciousness is the ground of being. They
agree with quantum physics. They are there one step ahead of the
scientists today, but why they failed is because they are mixed up. Many
of the religions are mixed up about the emphasis, [that is] which
archetype should be emphasized and which archetypes should not be so
emphasized.
Some religions get mixed up in the representation, for example, good and
evil. There is no archetype of evil, but some religions get so hung up with
concept of evil that they make evil into an archetype.
Dr. Alvino: Let me shift our discussion a little bit. As I mentioned to you before we
started recording, about 20 years ago one of my early mentors in
creativity, or let’s call it creative problem solving, that would be more
accurate, was that Dr. E. Paul Torrance. And for a time I run his national
competition called the Future Problem Solving Program. It is based on a
pretty simple, but effective, six-step process that involves “divergent
thinking,” and I know that you refer to divergent thinking in your book.
One of the things that was (probably still is) missing from that process –
and it is what Dr. Torrance and I integrated into an expanded model we
called “Future Problem Solving Model for Business” – was incubation,
which I think is akin to the “be” part of your do-be-do-be-do formula.
We allowed time for incubation, and I further distinguished, further
differentiated between what I called at the time active incubation and
passive incubation. I’m thinking that what you describe as “being” or
“resting” might be what I would call “passive” incubation….
“Active” incubation, on the other hand, means very deliberately going
into meditation [with the intention of remaining open to whatever
presents itself]. It’s very intentionally or actively trying to tap into that
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[deep place beyond ego]… actively trying to do nothing, or consciously
trying attain an unconscious “state of incubation,” as opposed to the kind
of incubation we generally understand when we’re not thinking about
our problem anymore, we might move on and be doing something else,
and all of a sudden aha! it comes to us, there it is! How critical is this
“state of incubation” to us.
Dr. Goswami: It is very critical because quantum physics literally is saying that all
objects are waves of possibility. You know about waves. When we throw
a pebble in the pond, we create a very small water wave first but the
waves spread. It becomes bigger and bigger lines of crest. The same
thing for waves of possibility. Initially, when we start a thought exists,
the fulcrum [or foundational support for this] is non-thought but it
spreads… if we allow it to spread in the unconscious, it becomes a wave
of possibility, and the little wave starting from the non-thinking becomes
a bigger and bigger wave of possibility allowing it to enclose, engulf the
unknown, get into the unknown territory.
This is where the power of quantum physics comes in. If we have a
bigger pool of possibility to choose from, why should do we settle for a
small pool of possibility? How does the pool become big? How does the
pool involve new possibilities? Unconscious processing in open
incubation and not so open incubation is a good analogy. When the
incubation is open is when our unconscious is relatively keen. What do
we mean by that?
Usually the unconscious is all plotted out because of unsettled,
unresolved issues during the day. Everybody has them. We get
emotional about things and we don’t settle it. We don’t have closure.
We don’t have even the concept of closure although [some therapists]
today talk about closure but they really don’t know what they are talking
about.
Closure is to settle the issues of the day so that they don’t bother you in
the unconscious. Others can do that. Spiritual traditions have a better
[grasp of this]. They call it “present centeredness.” We are always
anxious about the future and anxious what we did in the past right or
wrong, we incessantly go over it. In this way, we dwell in the past and
create the [same] future, and the combination is what takes us away
from the present.
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
7 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
The worse part of it is that this produces a huge amount of residue in our
unconscious, which we can easily find out by just realizing that most of
our dreams are residue that we [didn’t resolve] during the day. A clean
unconscious is the key to making the unconscious [accessible through
active incubation]. Otherwise it will be very passive [incubation] because
there is very little chance that truly new possibilities will enter the
unconscious because it is still plotted up.
Dr. Alvino: So, cleaning up the unconscious begins with our cleaning up some things
at the conscious level?
Dr. Goswami: Absolutely, cleaning up… they learn to do closure, learn to live in a
present-centered way which is not to worry too much about the past,
what I did wrong instead of accepting their mistakes. Creative people
learn to accept their mistakes. They don’t [dwell on the past] and
therefore they don’t create the future from their anxiety; because if we
create… if we think about making mistakes of the past, invariably we
want to [limit] ourselves, and therefore it creates a future in which we
are not making mistakes.
This is not necessary. Just let the mistakes go, forgive yourself. That’s
the spiritual word. [Various religious traditions] have all these concepts
of forgiveness. Forgiveness begins with forgiving yourself, that’s the
main forgiveness. Creative people routinely accept that failures are the
pillars of success… [other people too forgive themselves], but it is really
true for creative people. They always accept failures as the pillar of the
success, the eventual breakthrough that is called a creative insight or
“quantum leap” in the new language of quantum physics.
Dr. Alvino: That is a wonderful prescription. Absolutely, self-forgiveness is so, so
critical.
A little while ago, you mentioned that the realm or world of law of
attraction is that of intuition. I coined a phrase recently as I was working
on my book and obviously I was familiarizing myself with your principles
and your philosophy; and even in your new book, Quantum Creativity,
you talked about the importance of observation.
I think that if you had to say, how does the quantum world [scale up to
the Newtonian Universe] -- abstracting, if you will, from all the
entanglements, entangled hierarchies and brain processes – I think one
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
8 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
would have to say that it is through observation… so it is not only at the
quantum level that objects come into existence….
I’m probably philosophically as radical as John Wheeler (meaning
genesis by observership), but even if we don’t go that far, objects are
required to be observed before they emerge from the potentiality of the
wave function. I started thinking that the law of attraction is not an
irreducible law. Something like what I coined as law of [quantum]
observation would be more of an irreducible law.
If I look at the law of attraction and ask, how does it work? It works
through observation at the very quantum level that scales up to our
Newtonian Universe. For me, something like observation or what I’m
calling the law of quantum observation is much more primary and
irreducible than the law of attraction. Does that make any sense?
Dr. Goswami: Yes, if you want to use this language, yes without the law of observation
as you put it, or the “observer effect” as I put it, there would be no
manifest universe. I mean it requires… it’s going to take a tangled
hierarchical brain to have observership. A stone cannot observe because
it doesn’t have a tangled hierarchy in the way that the stone is made, but
the brain does and brain cells do; so as soon as life enters the picture,
there’s something radically different. There is this observership.
Any living being, even a single living cell, has observership. They manifest
a little bit of the universe for itself which it experiences separate from
itself, that’s the key. How do we experience things separate from
ourselves… because we ourselves have a circularity, a circular logic built
into the vehicle with which you observe, and that circularity doesn’t allow
us to think of the rest of the universe as us. Circularity means self-
reference…
We identify the brain, or we identify the living cell, and both identities
are the crucial component of what is “I.” And that identity [of what is “I”]
is the crucial component also of creativity because without this subject,
looking at objects, there would be no investigator, no explorer. So the
world is built in such a way that there is the explorer who explores and
finds objects of what they’re exploring, [i.e.] meaning and values. Those
are things we explore. When we creative are in exploration we can get
exploration to the [next] farther new front.
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Dr. Alvino: [The way you described the circularity or self-referential nature of
Consciousness…] some spiritual traditions would call identity with
anything outside ourselves as “wrong identification,” correct?
Dr. Goswami: Yes, they would say that actually you are this, you are everything, but the
point is that it’s not our experience. Yes, we are everything when we go
beyond experience. In the unconscious we are everything because
consciousness engulfs all possibilities regardless of whether it is material
or mental or vital or archetypal, but beyond where we live, where we are
consciously aware that we are we, I am I, in that realm, indeed mistakes
are little overreaching.
Because in this reality, in the manifest world, we do have separateness.
We do experience ourselves separate from the objects. It is unfortunate
that the religious spiritual traditions always have ignored this world of
separateness, world of manifestation, because it is an appearance... but
it’s an appearance which is scientific where scientific laws hold and
there’s a difference. So it’s not an appearance which is trivial because
otherwise why would there be the laws, that doesn’t make any sense.
Trivial things don’t have laws behind their actions. Also, there is
evolution, so there is a meaning too because this manifest reality
evolved. There has to be a meaning to evolution as well, so what it
means then is that the manifest world is also meaningful. It’s not a trivial
thing, it’s meaningful, it evolves towards greater and greater expressions
of the values, of the archetypal values. This is the simple meaning of
evolution.
When you get that, when the creative vision gets it, then creativity is
much more enhanced than exploring creativity without it. What is the
purpose of creativity? To make better and better representations of the
archetypes in the world, in the manifest world.
Dr. Alvino: The archetypes… let’s talk a little bit about your concept of downward
causation, which was really fascinating to me, especially the concept of
subject and object being created simultaneously. [Downward Causation]
seems also to be a very central concept to understanding creativity as
you do.
Dr. Goswami: As well as understanding quantum physics itself, because if we get into
the basic physics, quantum mathematics gives us possibilities. It never
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
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10 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
talks about actuality. It’s our job, the physicist’s job, to understand how
the possibilities ever become actuality. When we look into this problem,
this is called the “quantum measurement problem” because it is a fact
that in the presence of an observer, possibilities are not seen. What is
seen, instead, is an actual object, an actual object in a definite position.
How does the possibility of an electron in many possible positions
become an actual electron at a particular point? This problem is so
difficult from a scientific materialistic point of view, that just asking this
question and trying to solve it will show you that this paradox negates
scientific materialism completely.
Why is there a paradox? Think about it, elementary particles first are
possibilities. Elementary particles make atoms. Atoms have been also a
possibility. Atoms make molecules, they are also possibility. Molecules
make the cells, make the brain… All the way to the brain we only get
possibilities. So if you think conscious observers [emerge and are based
on brain functions], you are stuck because it’s just possibility.
A possible observer looking at a possible electron can that make
actuality? No way… mathematicians proved it mathematically. No
material interaction can ever convert possibility into actuality.
Who does it? That’s where downward causation comes in. Consciousness
does it. It’s not in the everyday ego consciousness instead a
consciousness that we can call an elevated consciousness, a higher
consciousness, this is the terminology of spiritual tradition.
We do it because the higher consciousness does it. We are unconscious
of [this], but regardless of our situation, it is consciousness that does it.
Downward causation from its higher consciousness is what converts
possibility into actuality. This is fundamentally necessary to understand
quantum physics, so I say quantum physics is a physics of consciousness.
Without introducing consciousness into the equation, you can never
make sense of the fundamental question of quantum physics that
connects it to experimental data.
Experimental data says look only actualities. Theory says, possibilities are
the beginning, so how do you make the connection? We have to bring
consciousness into the picture in order to make a connection. As soon as
consciousness is in, as soon as possibilities, ideal possibilities are in,
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
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immediately you’ll see how creativity flourishes in the quantum orbit,
because possibility means we can be creative to explore new possibilities.
Consciousness means we have the prerogative of doing it because we are
it.
Dr. Alvino: Downward causation you’ve called it, you can call it higher
consciousness, you can call it transcendental self, you can even call it
God…
Dr. Goswami: Yeah, I think we should keep away from using the word “Self” for this
because self has a different connotation, so we should [call it]
transcendent consciousness or quantum consciousness, or God if you are
not too sensitive. Some materialists have become very sensitive about
the word God, but I think about 60%, 70% of the world’s people feel
respect for the word God. It does not confuse them very much. In fact it
gives them the assurance, so God is perfectly good word for it.
Dr. Alvino: When you say that we are capable, we actually have the equipment, we
are the equipment, we are capable of creating anything we desire, any
future we desire, how do I tap into God? How do I tap into transcendent
consciousness, the quantum consciousness, and then when I’m there
create any reality that I want, as you say? And I think that you are saying
in your book very beautifully that consciousness gets behind us in doing
this when the reality we desire to create is in service of others, or in
service of humanity, in service of evolution… when we are serving we are
more up to tap into that level... to get consciousness behind us. Is that a
fair assessment?
Dr. Goswami: I think it’s a very good assessment. Rabbi Hillel said long ago if I am not
for myself, who am I, and then he added the second line which is the
quintessential line, if I’m only for myself, what am I?
If we get the message of ethics then truly we have to recognize that we,
the “I,” does not end with this brain, this body. Ultimately this is where
the word Self comes in to denote everything. I ultimately must also
involve the other. When we involve the other, we become we. I goes to
We.
[In this way] we are closer to the presentation of consciousness as a
whole, because consciousness as a whole has no division. Everybody taps
into the same creative consciousness, you can call it God. Everyone taps
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
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into the same place. Therefore in consciousness there is no
separateness. Separateness allows us to [represent] manifestation. As
you said earlier subject and objects arise together with manifestation.
In manifestation we do have a Universal Self if we are very attuned to
that moment in which we intuit… we can in fact have a cosmic self-
experience. Buddhism calls it satori. In Hinduism it’s called samadhi.
Even in Christianity they have the name for it, the experience of the Holy
Spirit. Holy Spirit is the cosmic self, but then we have our own
conditioning of the brain and the old stimuli. The responses are shifted
through this conditioning that gives us the ego. When we give a
conditioned response, we are speaking from the ego.
Again, the ego has a role to play because ego repertoire is where past
experience is and represents our expertise. If you learn a lot of
mathematics, you become a physicist. If you learn a lot of stuff about
architecture, you will become an architect. This learned repertoire is a
vital part of creativity. You cannot be creative in science without having
learned repertoire of the ego without having that identity (which gives
you a big ego).
Ego is not entirely to be forsaken or condemned like it is in spiritual and
religious traditions, but quantum physics is recognizing that the ego does
have a role to play even in spiritual search. Even in spiritual exploration
the ego plays a very strong role until the very last step of creative
enlightenment. The very last stage when we are surrendering totally to
the cosmos, we give up the ego, but that’s the very last stage of
enlightenment – except for that ego retains its importance.
Creativity has four stages: preparation, incubation (about which you talk
a lot) insight or quantum leap, and then manifestation. In the
manifestation stage, we have an experience, and this is what creative
people highly desire, this experience called flow. This flow experience is
advanced between ego and the cosmic self which I call Quantum Self.
Ego is very important at that stage of manifestation.
Dr. Alvino: When you speak of flow and you give some really great examples, I think
of that interplay between ego and higher consciousness, I know that as a
writer, when I write… I’m not going to pretend that I channel things, but I
do often feel that I am a conduit and that the knowledge that is flowing
through my pen, so to speak, maybe it’s me, maybe it’s not me.
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I get on a role, I get in flow and things start coming out, and I describe it
as actually very organic… meaning that I may have intended a certain
outline for a book or article, for example, and I start writing and I might
have thought that point A happens two pages from now and all of a
sudden, in a very organic way through the power of association [or some
other power], point A is going to be expressed right now because it fits, it
works and I’m following that flow. I’m following that intuition.
Dr. Goswami: It is everybody’s experience, so I actually do that. Where does that flow
come from? It is the encounter of the ego and the Quantum Self.
Quantum Self contributes the intuitive aspect, the new aspects, new
insights, and ego contributes the repertoire in which the insight has to be
manifested. Insight has to be represented.
When we understand the importance of both then we are creative. Do-
be-do-be-do and then you add that … add this flow idea to do-be-do-be-
do. Do-be-do-be-do is what precipitates the insight, but then what
manifests the insight… then we need the flow.
Dr. Alvino: We absolutely need the flow to manifest the insight, and I love the way
you are giving us a new respect for the ego because we do need it, and
you’re absolutely right, there are religious traditions that go out of their
way to destroy the ego.
Dr. Goswami: That is a huge mistake.
Let’s talk a little bit about the insight. We have not emphasized it.
Insight has to be discontinuous. This is also part of quantum physics such
as non-locality, this interconnectedness of the domain of potentiality is
very important for quantum physics. Similarly, this idea that we can take
a discontinuous leap... discontinuous meaning… nothing to do with any
old step, anything that I knew, anything that I could argue on the basis of
algorithms, none of that. Everything is left behind. Something totally
new is a quantum leap without any algorithm that can be given for it,
without any space, mental space in between.
We do not go to the mental space… when we discover something new.
Just like an electron it does not go to the physical space between two
atomic orbits when it jumps from one orbit to the other.
Similarly, when we take a quantum leap off meaning, we never go to the
intervening mental space between old meaning and new meaning. We
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
14 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
stop from here, we just disappear thinking about old and all of the
sudden there is the new. We are thinking something totally new.
The profile of this is very simple. Everybody has the experience of aha!
that surprise insight always brings. Why is creativity called an aha!
experience? Psychologists call it an aha experience because the aha!
surprise gives away the discontinuity from previous thought.
The other quantum characteristic of this insight is that there is a certainty
in the knowledge gained. The insight that you have, you know that this is
true. There’s a famous Einstein story I always love telling. [Einstein had
to wait four years to verify his theory of general relativity] because only
during a solar eclipse could it be verified. They did and Einstein was
correct.
A news woman sees Einstein with a bunch of telegrams on his desk. She
was a friend so she went and asked Professor Einstein this is wonderful
that your theory had been verified, but how would you have felt if the
experiment proven you’re wrong? Einstein looked at her and said, young
lady, I would have felt very sorry for the [scientists]. My theory is correct.
When a creative person does discover something through a quantum
leap, that certainty is absolutely staggering. Every time I had such a
quantum leap, despite however much opposition there was, I knew that
it was going to be eventually accepted as the truth.
Dr. Alvino: I want to talk about being a “quantum activist” and how you see this role;
and what you are doing essentially to enlighten the world, and I suppose
too fellow scientists and physicists even though they are of the
materialist kind. Talk a little bit about your center and how that’s moving
forward.
Dr. Goswami: It’s going pretty well, that’s the first important thing to say, but look why
do we need it? We need it because almost 100 years have gone by since
the discovery of quantum ideas and still the world view continues to be
Newtonian. It’s almost like physicists have a conspiracy of silence. You
want to talk about the consequences of the quantum mathematics...
Quantum mathematics clearly says that, look there is this domain of
potentiality… by non-locality, signal-less communication, it’s
experimentally definable and experimentally verified. There really are
two domains of reality [quantum and Newtonian]. In spite of that, in
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
15 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
spite of this fact that quantum physics is telling us in no ambiguous
terms, and experiments have verified, scientists remain silent on this
issue, and generalists routinely, time after time and every day, are
pushing the idea that there is only this space-time world.
[However] nature demands that there are two levels of reality, it’s not
super nature, it’s not invention of religious people. It is fact. It is fact
verified by both by theory of quantum physics and experimental data.
This is very important to recognize. How do we do it if the scientists are
going to be silent about it? We do it by activism. We bring it to the
attention of the public directly, because the public can verily understand
it. My experience is that I have given hundreds of workshops on this
subject. My experience is that non-scientists get it much quicker than a
person who has background in science, because background in science
today means that you pick up a whole bunch of prejudices like matter is
everything, brain is responsible for all phenomena including creativity
which is [false].
How can brain be creative, because brain is only the depository of known
memory? In this way, one has to be an activist. One has to take the
message of quantum physics directly to the public, and then the idea that
if you start using quantum physics… that’s to show that we are changing
society.
If people use quantum physics, quantum principles like quantum leap, we
talked about that non-locality, we mentioned tangled hierarchy and
circular relationship – these concepts are the concepts through which
you recognize who we are and through that recognition, we become
interested in the world because we realize we are not separate from the
world. The world is also us. It’s not just a song, it’s not just idealism. The
world is us.
Therefore we must solve the problems of the world. We must solve the
problems of the world and literally save the world from the atrocities of
scientific materialism, which has given us among other things global
climate change which is a very, very, very serious phenomenon.
How do we find solution for this? How do we find solutions for the
health care problem? We had so much uproar about “Obamacare” which
is not even a very good beginning to tell you the truth, but it is a
Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1
April 26, 2014
16 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino
beginning. But now we have to deal so much on it. How do we build it?
How do we make medicine cheap for everyone? I’ll guess the answer is
alternative medicine. Without quantum physics you can never find a
theory behind alternative medicine.
I wrote a book called The Quantum Doctor several years ago. In that
book I laid down clearly that the quantum message is very different from
that which the allopathic medicine and Newtonian physics tell you. The
quantum message gives subtle experience of validity…
END OF PART 1
For more information on Dr. Amit Goswami and his Center for Quantum
Activism, go to www.amitgoswami.org.

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Jim Alvino Interview of Dr Amit Goswami Transcript

  • 1. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 1 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino Dr. Jim Alvino: My guest today is Dr. Amit Goswami, a fascinating gentleman, an absolutely brilliant man who has written quite a few books on Quantum Physics. He is going to be talking his most recent book, which I've just finished, called Quantum Creativity, and subtitle, Think Quantum, Be Creative. Dr. Goswami is a retired professor of physics at the University of Oregon, was one of the featured authorities in the movie, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, and now is founder of the Center for Quantum Activism. One of Dr. Goswami’s purposes is to make us aware -- make the scientific community aware and the lay community aware -- that what he calls “materialist science,” in other words, the science of everyday experience or our Newtonian Universe predicated on the belief that there is an objective reality “out there” independent of our consciousness – is a bankrupt if not dangerous paradigm. Dr. Goswami is seeking to turn that view on its head when he declares: "No, that's not the case, consciousness is primary.” He is spearheading a movement to develop a “science of consciousness,” science within consciousness, a science that recognizes the participatory role of the observer. In addition to Quantum Creativity, he has written The Self- Aware Universe, The Visionary Window, Physics of the Soul, God Is Not Dead. And he is one magnificent, brilliant yet down-to-earth human being… Dr. Goswami, welcome! Dr. Amit Goswani: Thank you so much. Dr. Alvino: It's such an honor, such an honor to have you on the show. I've just finished your latest book, and I know your other books, saw you on What the Bleep Do We Know!?, and you have a perspective and a position that has resonated with me for decades, although just as yours, perhaps, has been recently articulated and crystallized, so has mine…. Let's jump right into your new book, Quantum Creativity, Think Quantum, Be Creative. What's the central message of this book? Dr. Goswami: The central message is the subtitle, “think quantum, be creative.” Quantum thinking is very different from ordinary thinking. It is thinking at two levels of reality in which quantum objects are allowed to be and we participate. One level, we are very familiar, the level of which we have conscious awareness. The other level, psychologists call it
  • 2. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 2 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino “unconscious.” Scientific materialists deny it, spiritual traditions call it the “transcendent” level, but quantum physics discovered the scientific meaning of this level. It is the level of potentiality where quantum objects as waves of potentiality reside. This is the level that we can access and this is where our creative causal power lies Quantum thinking involves not only thinking deliberately in a step-by- step way, like we do in conscious awareness, but also allowing the unconscious to do our job partly. When we do that, the combination of the subconscious and conscious processing is dynamite. The combination is causally potent, [the] combination is creative. What we call “creative” is what we experience as creativity. We can make fun of creativity by thinking of [it as merely a] brain phenomenon, but that's not really creativity, it's just rehash. Real creativity depends on the school-level thinking ability. Anyone can develop it, anyone can build on it. All you have to do is to understand some basic stuff, follow a process… so think quantum, be creative.  Dr. Alvino: That's amazing. You make it sound so easy, and actually, maybe it is. You stated [the principle] somewhere… you said it's very clear, very clear, that the space or the place from which we create our reality is an extraordinary state of consciousness. It's not from the ego, which locks us into a certain personality, a certain paradigm, blinders, if you will. What is that extraordinary state of consciousness and how do we actually access it? Dr. Goswami: Once again, this is the crucial point, so we can go over it several times from different angles. This domain of potentiality is where quantum possibility waves reside. When we examine it, it's also the domain which is interconnected, where everything travels instantly and no signal is needed for communication. In quantum physics, we also call it the “non-local” domain of [reality]. Then when we examine it, we find that this consciousness itself is the interconnecting element of our existence, and we call consciousness, [it is that] with which we know. It is really our consciousness, and how do we prepare for it, how do we access it? This is the crucial question. We access it quite regularly because we have the ability that is called intuition. It's one of our four experiences. People get stuck with just
  • 3. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 3 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino sensory experience and think that's it. They allow thinking, but only as a brain phenomenon. In actuality, there is also feeling, which people experience when they emote, and there is also intuition. There are four kinds of experiences, and all four experiences are really possibilities from which consciousness chooses, and then they become experiences. The actual experience is a result of conscious choice from possibilities existing in four different kinds of universes. One is the sensory universe, that one we are familiar with, that’s the space-time-matter world; but then there is the world of feelings, vital energy that we feel; then the world of mind, meaning that we think; and then the world of intuition, which is archetypal. This is the one that you are interested in because you have this law of attraction. [Law of attraction] really involves the archetypes. Archetypes are attracted to us, and this is precisely what we experience in intuition if we follow up the intuition. An intuition is the signature of the law of attraction. When we follow this up, then we get into creativity, and that’s where quantum creativity begins. The process is, as I said, just learning how to allow the unconscious to process the creative intuition that begins a creative exploration; allow the unconscious [to unfold]. What does that entail? Ordinary New York, for example, is so busy. It never allows the unconscious on whatever it is that we are focused on or that we are investigating. How to allow the unconscious? We’d slow down. It’s a process of do and be, and that be is just relaxing, doing nothing. Do and not do, do and be. I often call it do-be-do-be-do because it truly it involves do-be-do-be-do with alternating doing and be. Doing because you’ve been focusing (focusing on the question that we are asking about) and being gives us the ability to process in the unconscious. Dr. Alvino: What I find amazing is that, actually, in the kind of the world in which we live – you know, do-do-do -- you have framed it in such a way as elevate non-doing. Non-doing in a way is equally important, if not more important, and yet we’re racing around in this digital/electronic world we participate in each day, and often don’t even take a moment to breathe! Dr. Goswami: That’s right. We have become the information junkies. Instead of investigating meaning on the archetypes like love, beauty, justice, truth we are now information junkies. We just get from one [pile of]
  • 4. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 4 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino information to another, and there is just so much information generally today that we never get enough time for us to even think about meaning for ourselves, or creativity. Dr. Alvino: There is a process in your book… you describe a process of going deep, a process of meditation… it’s a process of “not doing” or non-doing, and I’ll tell you the truth, it threw me off a little bit. It felt like a direction that I didn’t anticipate when you turned to archetypes. I haven’t yet connected the dots for myself as to how and why you went there. What’s this about? Dr. Goswami: Because the archetypes are what we investigate in the deepest level of our being, which I describe as fundamental creativity. Look at scientists, and how scientists are looking for the archetype of truth. This is a Platonic archetype. Jungian archetypes are mental representations of the platonic archetype. Scientists investigate truth; artists investigate beauty; the lawyer and the jurist, they investigate justice; ethical people, and religions, they investigate goodness; business people investigate the archetype of abundance; psychologists investigate the archetype of the self, so everyone has an archetype. Every human profession of any importance is investigating, exploring, an archetype that comes through with [meditation] to intuition, and we can only make mental representations of it. Therefore archetypes are beyond thinking. This is where they [archetypes] are a bit confusing sometimes. Like you try to define love, and you’ll find that, no you can’t really define it. You can describe your experiences of it but that’s basically it [is beyond definition]. Whatever you do is not the definition of love itself. Dr. Alvino: You just alluded to Platonic forms as essentially the ground or the foundation of even Jungian archetypes. Wouldn’t something like the Platonic forms… I see a couple different ways I can ask this, aren’t the Platonic forms or at least the articulation of those culturally conditioned, or are there similar or common archetypes regardless of the culture – whether it’s a western culture, eastern culture and so forth? Dr. Goswami: I claim that there are… these archetypes are in every culture and every culture has tried to introduce their take on how civilization [manifests and unfolds] in that culture according to their images of the archetypes.
  • 5. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 5 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino Some archetypes have been preferred more selected for investigation in some of the cultures. Other archetypes the culture ignores. When an archetype is ignored in a particular culture, you can tell because the societies will correspondingly be very [strict and closed off]… This is certainly a problem. Different religions have different emphasis on different archetypes, which also does not help so much. This is why we find that some religions are more open than others. Although, all religions are based on the fundamental truth that consciousness is the ground of being. They agree with quantum physics. They are there one step ahead of the scientists today, but why they failed is because they are mixed up. Many of the religions are mixed up about the emphasis, [that is] which archetype should be emphasized and which archetypes should not be so emphasized. Some religions get mixed up in the representation, for example, good and evil. There is no archetype of evil, but some religions get so hung up with concept of evil that they make evil into an archetype. Dr. Alvino: Let me shift our discussion a little bit. As I mentioned to you before we started recording, about 20 years ago one of my early mentors in creativity, or let’s call it creative problem solving, that would be more accurate, was that Dr. E. Paul Torrance. And for a time I run his national competition called the Future Problem Solving Program. It is based on a pretty simple, but effective, six-step process that involves “divergent thinking,” and I know that you refer to divergent thinking in your book. One of the things that was (probably still is) missing from that process – and it is what Dr. Torrance and I integrated into an expanded model we called “Future Problem Solving Model for Business” – was incubation, which I think is akin to the “be” part of your do-be-do-be-do formula. We allowed time for incubation, and I further distinguished, further differentiated between what I called at the time active incubation and passive incubation. I’m thinking that what you describe as “being” or “resting” might be what I would call “passive” incubation…. “Active” incubation, on the other hand, means very deliberately going into meditation [with the intention of remaining open to whatever presents itself]. It’s very intentionally or actively trying to tap into that
  • 6. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 6 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino [deep place beyond ego]… actively trying to do nothing, or consciously trying attain an unconscious “state of incubation,” as opposed to the kind of incubation we generally understand when we’re not thinking about our problem anymore, we might move on and be doing something else, and all of a sudden aha! it comes to us, there it is! How critical is this “state of incubation” to us. Dr. Goswami: It is very critical because quantum physics literally is saying that all objects are waves of possibility. You know about waves. When we throw a pebble in the pond, we create a very small water wave first but the waves spread. It becomes bigger and bigger lines of crest. The same thing for waves of possibility. Initially, when we start a thought exists, the fulcrum [or foundational support for this] is non-thought but it spreads… if we allow it to spread in the unconscious, it becomes a wave of possibility, and the little wave starting from the non-thinking becomes a bigger and bigger wave of possibility allowing it to enclose, engulf the unknown, get into the unknown territory. This is where the power of quantum physics comes in. If we have a bigger pool of possibility to choose from, why should do we settle for a small pool of possibility? How does the pool become big? How does the pool involve new possibilities? Unconscious processing in open incubation and not so open incubation is a good analogy. When the incubation is open is when our unconscious is relatively keen. What do we mean by that? Usually the unconscious is all plotted out because of unsettled, unresolved issues during the day. Everybody has them. We get emotional about things and we don’t settle it. We don’t have closure. We don’t have even the concept of closure although [some therapists] today talk about closure but they really don’t know what they are talking about. Closure is to settle the issues of the day so that they don’t bother you in the unconscious. Others can do that. Spiritual traditions have a better [grasp of this]. They call it “present centeredness.” We are always anxious about the future and anxious what we did in the past right or wrong, we incessantly go over it. In this way, we dwell in the past and create the [same] future, and the combination is what takes us away from the present.
  • 7. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 7 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino The worse part of it is that this produces a huge amount of residue in our unconscious, which we can easily find out by just realizing that most of our dreams are residue that we [didn’t resolve] during the day. A clean unconscious is the key to making the unconscious [accessible through active incubation]. Otherwise it will be very passive [incubation] because there is very little chance that truly new possibilities will enter the unconscious because it is still plotted up. Dr. Alvino: So, cleaning up the unconscious begins with our cleaning up some things at the conscious level? Dr. Goswami: Absolutely, cleaning up… they learn to do closure, learn to live in a present-centered way which is not to worry too much about the past, what I did wrong instead of accepting their mistakes. Creative people learn to accept their mistakes. They don’t [dwell on the past] and therefore they don’t create the future from their anxiety; because if we create… if we think about making mistakes of the past, invariably we want to [limit] ourselves, and therefore it creates a future in which we are not making mistakes. This is not necessary. Just let the mistakes go, forgive yourself. That’s the spiritual word. [Various religious traditions] have all these concepts of forgiveness. Forgiveness begins with forgiving yourself, that’s the main forgiveness. Creative people routinely accept that failures are the pillars of success… [other people too forgive themselves], but it is really true for creative people. They always accept failures as the pillar of the success, the eventual breakthrough that is called a creative insight or “quantum leap” in the new language of quantum physics. Dr. Alvino: That is a wonderful prescription. Absolutely, self-forgiveness is so, so critical. A little while ago, you mentioned that the realm or world of law of attraction is that of intuition. I coined a phrase recently as I was working on my book and obviously I was familiarizing myself with your principles and your philosophy; and even in your new book, Quantum Creativity, you talked about the importance of observation. I think that if you had to say, how does the quantum world [scale up to the Newtonian Universe] -- abstracting, if you will, from all the entanglements, entangled hierarchies and brain processes – I think one
  • 8. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 8 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino would have to say that it is through observation… so it is not only at the quantum level that objects come into existence…. I’m probably philosophically as radical as John Wheeler (meaning genesis by observership), but even if we don’t go that far, objects are required to be observed before they emerge from the potentiality of the wave function. I started thinking that the law of attraction is not an irreducible law. Something like what I coined as law of [quantum] observation would be more of an irreducible law. If I look at the law of attraction and ask, how does it work? It works through observation at the very quantum level that scales up to our Newtonian Universe. For me, something like observation or what I’m calling the law of quantum observation is much more primary and irreducible than the law of attraction. Does that make any sense? Dr. Goswami: Yes, if you want to use this language, yes without the law of observation as you put it, or the “observer effect” as I put it, there would be no manifest universe. I mean it requires… it’s going to take a tangled hierarchical brain to have observership. A stone cannot observe because it doesn’t have a tangled hierarchy in the way that the stone is made, but the brain does and brain cells do; so as soon as life enters the picture, there’s something radically different. There is this observership. Any living being, even a single living cell, has observership. They manifest a little bit of the universe for itself which it experiences separate from itself, that’s the key. How do we experience things separate from ourselves… because we ourselves have a circularity, a circular logic built into the vehicle with which you observe, and that circularity doesn’t allow us to think of the rest of the universe as us. Circularity means self- reference… We identify the brain, or we identify the living cell, and both identities are the crucial component of what is “I.” And that identity [of what is “I”] is the crucial component also of creativity because without this subject, looking at objects, there would be no investigator, no explorer. So the world is built in such a way that there is the explorer who explores and finds objects of what they’re exploring, [i.e.] meaning and values. Those are things we explore. When we creative are in exploration we can get exploration to the [next] farther new front.
  • 9. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 9 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino Dr. Alvino: [The way you described the circularity or self-referential nature of Consciousness…] some spiritual traditions would call identity with anything outside ourselves as “wrong identification,” correct? Dr. Goswami: Yes, they would say that actually you are this, you are everything, but the point is that it’s not our experience. Yes, we are everything when we go beyond experience. In the unconscious we are everything because consciousness engulfs all possibilities regardless of whether it is material or mental or vital or archetypal, but beyond where we live, where we are consciously aware that we are we, I am I, in that realm, indeed mistakes are little overreaching. Because in this reality, in the manifest world, we do have separateness. We do experience ourselves separate from the objects. It is unfortunate that the religious spiritual traditions always have ignored this world of separateness, world of manifestation, because it is an appearance... but it’s an appearance which is scientific where scientific laws hold and there’s a difference. So it’s not an appearance which is trivial because otherwise why would there be the laws, that doesn’t make any sense. Trivial things don’t have laws behind their actions. Also, there is evolution, so there is a meaning too because this manifest reality evolved. There has to be a meaning to evolution as well, so what it means then is that the manifest world is also meaningful. It’s not a trivial thing, it’s meaningful, it evolves towards greater and greater expressions of the values, of the archetypal values. This is the simple meaning of evolution. When you get that, when the creative vision gets it, then creativity is much more enhanced than exploring creativity without it. What is the purpose of creativity? To make better and better representations of the archetypes in the world, in the manifest world. Dr. Alvino: The archetypes… let’s talk a little bit about your concept of downward causation, which was really fascinating to me, especially the concept of subject and object being created simultaneously. [Downward Causation] seems also to be a very central concept to understanding creativity as you do. Dr. Goswami: As well as understanding quantum physics itself, because if we get into the basic physics, quantum mathematics gives us possibilities. It never
  • 10. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 10 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino talks about actuality. It’s our job, the physicist’s job, to understand how the possibilities ever become actuality. When we look into this problem, this is called the “quantum measurement problem” because it is a fact that in the presence of an observer, possibilities are not seen. What is seen, instead, is an actual object, an actual object in a definite position. How does the possibility of an electron in many possible positions become an actual electron at a particular point? This problem is so difficult from a scientific materialistic point of view, that just asking this question and trying to solve it will show you that this paradox negates scientific materialism completely. Why is there a paradox? Think about it, elementary particles first are possibilities. Elementary particles make atoms. Atoms have been also a possibility. Atoms make molecules, they are also possibility. Molecules make the cells, make the brain… All the way to the brain we only get possibilities. So if you think conscious observers [emerge and are based on brain functions], you are stuck because it’s just possibility. A possible observer looking at a possible electron can that make actuality? No way… mathematicians proved it mathematically. No material interaction can ever convert possibility into actuality. Who does it? That’s where downward causation comes in. Consciousness does it. It’s not in the everyday ego consciousness instead a consciousness that we can call an elevated consciousness, a higher consciousness, this is the terminology of spiritual tradition. We do it because the higher consciousness does it. We are unconscious of [this], but regardless of our situation, it is consciousness that does it. Downward causation from its higher consciousness is what converts possibility into actuality. This is fundamentally necessary to understand quantum physics, so I say quantum physics is a physics of consciousness. Without introducing consciousness into the equation, you can never make sense of the fundamental question of quantum physics that connects it to experimental data. Experimental data says look only actualities. Theory says, possibilities are the beginning, so how do you make the connection? We have to bring consciousness into the picture in order to make a connection. As soon as consciousness is in, as soon as possibilities, ideal possibilities are in,
  • 11. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 11 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino immediately you’ll see how creativity flourishes in the quantum orbit, because possibility means we can be creative to explore new possibilities. Consciousness means we have the prerogative of doing it because we are it. Dr. Alvino: Downward causation you’ve called it, you can call it higher consciousness, you can call it transcendental self, you can even call it God… Dr. Goswami: Yeah, I think we should keep away from using the word “Self” for this because self has a different connotation, so we should [call it] transcendent consciousness or quantum consciousness, or God if you are not too sensitive. Some materialists have become very sensitive about the word God, but I think about 60%, 70% of the world’s people feel respect for the word God. It does not confuse them very much. In fact it gives them the assurance, so God is perfectly good word for it. Dr. Alvino: When you say that we are capable, we actually have the equipment, we are the equipment, we are capable of creating anything we desire, any future we desire, how do I tap into God? How do I tap into transcendent consciousness, the quantum consciousness, and then when I’m there create any reality that I want, as you say? And I think that you are saying in your book very beautifully that consciousness gets behind us in doing this when the reality we desire to create is in service of others, or in service of humanity, in service of evolution… when we are serving we are more up to tap into that level... to get consciousness behind us. Is that a fair assessment? Dr. Goswami: I think it’s a very good assessment. Rabbi Hillel said long ago if I am not for myself, who am I, and then he added the second line which is the quintessential line, if I’m only for myself, what am I? If we get the message of ethics then truly we have to recognize that we, the “I,” does not end with this brain, this body. Ultimately this is where the word Self comes in to denote everything. I ultimately must also involve the other. When we involve the other, we become we. I goes to We. [In this way] we are closer to the presentation of consciousness as a whole, because consciousness as a whole has no division. Everybody taps into the same creative consciousness, you can call it God. Everyone taps
  • 12. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 12 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino into the same place. Therefore in consciousness there is no separateness. Separateness allows us to [represent] manifestation. As you said earlier subject and objects arise together with manifestation. In manifestation we do have a Universal Self if we are very attuned to that moment in which we intuit… we can in fact have a cosmic self- experience. Buddhism calls it satori. In Hinduism it’s called samadhi. Even in Christianity they have the name for it, the experience of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the cosmic self, but then we have our own conditioning of the brain and the old stimuli. The responses are shifted through this conditioning that gives us the ego. When we give a conditioned response, we are speaking from the ego. Again, the ego has a role to play because ego repertoire is where past experience is and represents our expertise. If you learn a lot of mathematics, you become a physicist. If you learn a lot of stuff about architecture, you will become an architect. This learned repertoire is a vital part of creativity. You cannot be creative in science without having learned repertoire of the ego without having that identity (which gives you a big ego). Ego is not entirely to be forsaken or condemned like it is in spiritual and religious traditions, but quantum physics is recognizing that the ego does have a role to play even in spiritual search. Even in spiritual exploration the ego plays a very strong role until the very last step of creative enlightenment. The very last stage when we are surrendering totally to the cosmos, we give up the ego, but that’s the very last stage of enlightenment – except for that ego retains its importance. Creativity has four stages: preparation, incubation (about which you talk a lot) insight or quantum leap, and then manifestation. In the manifestation stage, we have an experience, and this is what creative people highly desire, this experience called flow. This flow experience is advanced between ego and the cosmic self which I call Quantum Self. Ego is very important at that stage of manifestation. Dr. Alvino: When you speak of flow and you give some really great examples, I think of that interplay between ego and higher consciousness, I know that as a writer, when I write… I’m not going to pretend that I channel things, but I do often feel that I am a conduit and that the knowledge that is flowing through my pen, so to speak, maybe it’s me, maybe it’s not me.
  • 13. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 13 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino I get on a role, I get in flow and things start coming out, and I describe it as actually very organic… meaning that I may have intended a certain outline for a book or article, for example, and I start writing and I might have thought that point A happens two pages from now and all of a sudden, in a very organic way through the power of association [or some other power], point A is going to be expressed right now because it fits, it works and I’m following that flow. I’m following that intuition. Dr. Goswami: It is everybody’s experience, so I actually do that. Where does that flow come from? It is the encounter of the ego and the Quantum Self. Quantum Self contributes the intuitive aspect, the new aspects, new insights, and ego contributes the repertoire in which the insight has to be manifested. Insight has to be represented. When we understand the importance of both then we are creative. Do- be-do-be-do and then you add that … add this flow idea to do-be-do-be- do. Do-be-do-be-do is what precipitates the insight, but then what manifests the insight… then we need the flow. Dr. Alvino: We absolutely need the flow to manifest the insight, and I love the way you are giving us a new respect for the ego because we do need it, and you’re absolutely right, there are religious traditions that go out of their way to destroy the ego. Dr. Goswami: That is a huge mistake. Let’s talk a little bit about the insight. We have not emphasized it. Insight has to be discontinuous. This is also part of quantum physics such as non-locality, this interconnectedness of the domain of potentiality is very important for quantum physics. Similarly, this idea that we can take a discontinuous leap... discontinuous meaning… nothing to do with any old step, anything that I knew, anything that I could argue on the basis of algorithms, none of that. Everything is left behind. Something totally new is a quantum leap without any algorithm that can be given for it, without any space, mental space in between. We do not go to the mental space… when we discover something new. Just like an electron it does not go to the physical space between two atomic orbits when it jumps from one orbit to the other. Similarly, when we take a quantum leap off meaning, we never go to the intervening mental space between old meaning and new meaning. We
  • 14. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 14 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino stop from here, we just disappear thinking about old and all of the sudden there is the new. We are thinking something totally new. The profile of this is very simple. Everybody has the experience of aha! that surprise insight always brings. Why is creativity called an aha! experience? Psychologists call it an aha experience because the aha! surprise gives away the discontinuity from previous thought. The other quantum characteristic of this insight is that there is a certainty in the knowledge gained. The insight that you have, you know that this is true. There’s a famous Einstein story I always love telling. [Einstein had to wait four years to verify his theory of general relativity] because only during a solar eclipse could it be verified. They did and Einstein was correct. A news woman sees Einstein with a bunch of telegrams on his desk. She was a friend so she went and asked Professor Einstein this is wonderful that your theory had been verified, but how would you have felt if the experiment proven you’re wrong? Einstein looked at her and said, young lady, I would have felt very sorry for the [scientists]. My theory is correct. When a creative person does discover something through a quantum leap, that certainty is absolutely staggering. Every time I had such a quantum leap, despite however much opposition there was, I knew that it was going to be eventually accepted as the truth. Dr. Alvino: I want to talk about being a “quantum activist” and how you see this role; and what you are doing essentially to enlighten the world, and I suppose too fellow scientists and physicists even though they are of the materialist kind. Talk a little bit about your center and how that’s moving forward. Dr. Goswami: It’s going pretty well, that’s the first important thing to say, but look why do we need it? We need it because almost 100 years have gone by since the discovery of quantum ideas and still the world view continues to be Newtonian. It’s almost like physicists have a conspiracy of silence. You want to talk about the consequences of the quantum mathematics... Quantum mathematics clearly says that, look there is this domain of potentiality… by non-locality, signal-less communication, it’s experimentally definable and experimentally verified. There really are two domains of reality [quantum and Newtonian]. In spite of that, in
  • 15. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 15 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino spite of this fact that quantum physics is telling us in no ambiguous terms, and experiments have verified, scientists remain silent on this issue, and generalists routinely, time after time and every day, are pushing the idea that there is only this space-time world. [However] nature demands that there are two levels of reality, it’s not super nature, it’s not invention of religious people. It is fact. It is fact verified by both by theory of quantum physics and experimental data. This is very important to recognize. How do we do it if the scientists are going to be silent about it? We do it by activism. We bring it to the attention of the public directly, because the public can verily understand it. My experience is that I have given hundreds of workshops on this subject. My experience is that non-scientists get it much quicker than a person who has background in science, because background in science today means that you pick up a whole bunch of prejudices like matter is everything, brain is responsible for all phenomena including creativity which is [false]. How can brain be creative, because brain is only the depository of known memory? In this way, one has to be an activist. One has to take the message of quantum physics directly to the public, and then the idea that if you start using quantum physics… that’s to show that we are changing society. If people use quantum physics, quantum principles like quantum leap, we talked about that non-locality, we mentioned tangled hierarchy and circular relationship – these concepts are the concepts through which you recognize who we are and through that recognition, we become interested in the world because we realize we are not separate from the world. The world is also us. It’s not just a song, it’s not just idealism. The world is us. Therefore we must solve the problems of the world. We must solve the problems of the world and literally save the world from the atrocities of scientific materialism, which has given us among other things global climate change which is a very, very, very serious phenomenon. How do we find solution for this? How do we find solutions for the health care problem? We had so much uproar about “Obamacare” which is not even a very good beginning to tell you the truth, but it is a
  • 16. Dr. Jim Alvino Interviews Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 April 26, 2014 16 Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami – Part 1 © 2014 by James Alvino beginning. But now we have to deal so much on it. How do we build it? How do we make medicine cheap for everyone? I’ll guess the answer is alternative medicine. Without quantum physics you can never find a theory behind alternative medicine. I wrote a book called The Quantum Doctor several years ago. In that book I laid down clearly that the quantum message is very different from that which the allopathic medicine and Newtonian physics tell you. The quantum message gives subtle experience of validity… END OF PART 1 For more information on Dr. Amit Goswami and his Center for Quantum Activism, go to www.amitgoswami.org.